I can say that Macedonian is easy to learn, YES, but its hard to pronounce some words ( for foreigners coming out of the slavic group of languages) , we have some really hard , strong words on the tongue, compared to English, Italian and Spanish for example. But hey, every language is a story for it self. As for your friend , telling you that we dont use the past , i can only LOL . Maybe he dont use the past , but other Macedonians use it , on a daily basis :) P.S Dont worry about pronounciaton for the beginning , its not crucial .